Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-LedgerWith the Newark skyline behind him, 20 year old Ralph Alphoncio Jean pauses and looks back at his teammates during track team practice on the St. Benedict's campus. Ralph is a survivor of the earthquakes in Haiti and served as an interpreter for American doctors in Haiti. He has entered St. Benedict's as a sophomore.

NEWARK -- Scribbled in blue ink across his left hand were the words, "keep ur eyes on me."

He says it’s not a prayer, but a request to God.

But when Ralph Alphoncio Jean’s house in Haiti started shaking, he prayed. He prayed God would keep his family safe as he walked his mother and pregnant sister out of devastated Port-au-Prince.

And he prayed he would one day visit America.

Jean, 20, doesn’t like to talk about the earthquake that ruined his home, or the man he knew who died in an aftershock while protecting his son, or the woman he saw outside whose foot nearly fell from her leg. Instead he prefers to quickly rattle off the classes he’ll be taking this fall at a high school in Newark: Trigonometry, art, English.

It was Jean’s longing to brush up on his English that unknowingly began an unlikely journey that has brought him to the city’s Central Ward.

"My friends kept telling me, ‘You’re so lucky’ but no, I’m not lucky, I just try to do everything with all my heart," said Jean, 20, as he sat in the cafeteria of St. Benedict’s Preparatory School. "And Jesus is rewarding me for it."

Buoyed by the generosity of donors, including a physician from the Bronx for whom he had translated after the earthquake, Jean left Haiti. St. Benedict’s is one of the state’s top all-boys schools — as many as 99 percent of its graduates go on to college.

Jean said he always planned to finish high school and attend college, just like his mother told him to. He wants to become an engineer and construct streets and buildings, but his first dream is to become a doctor.

But days after the Haitian earthquake on Jan. 12, with his school and home destroyed, and his family relocated eight miles out of the city, Jean said he set out on a very different path.

He began translating for doctors at a city hospital. Most of the doctors spoke English and, as Jean has some knowledge of English, he translated for those speaking Haitian Creole and French. Jean said he would translate patients’ symptoms for doctors in the city’s hospital: the baby is breathing fast, this baby has a swollen head, that baby’s heart is beating too quickly.

He translated in exchange for food: bread, cake, chocolate or juice. Sometimes he would give his bag of food to his family and sometimes he would keep it for the next day’s breakfast, he said through a translator in a recent interview.

There at the hospital Jean made a friend in Daniel Hirsch, a neonatologist who works in Somerville and lives in the Bronx. A specialist in caring for the newborn, he was in Haiti on a medical relief mission a month after the 7.0 earthquake.

"The more I worked with him, the more I saw a good person and an honest person that wanted to help people," Hirsch said.

Toward the end of the trip, Hirsch said, he began asking Jean what he thought about coming to the U.S. to finish school. During a long distance phone call, Jean said yes.

From there, Hirsch worked his way through the immigration maze. He wired Jean money for a passport, filled out paperwork to get him a student visa and sent Jean’s school records to St. Benedict’s, which heard of Jean’s story through a family friend and offered a scholarship. Jean, who arrived in New York last month, has already begun classes at the school.

Hirsch, who lives with his wife, Lisa, and their three kids, has also opened up his home to Jean, who stays with them on the weekends when the school’s dormitories are closed. Hirsch said the living arrangement is an adjustment but it’s one his family welcomes.

"I’ll always remember how thankful he is for everything we are helping him with," said Hirsch.
Hirsch’s own family story helped inspire him to bring Jean to the U.S.

Hirsch’s Jewish father, grandmother and grandfather left Nazi Germany in 1939 with the help of a Pennsylvania couple who did not know them. The couple signed an affidavit, similar to the letter Hirsch wrote for Jean, saying they would sponsor his family’s stay in the U.S.

"Here these people in the 1940’s helped my family, and I felt like if I could help someone else get out from a difficult situation that it would be sort of a payback," Hirsch said.

Jean flew to New York on July 28 and began classes the next day at St. Benedict’s where he runs track and is taking a drama class.

Jean is still learning English, and sometimes speaks through an interpreter. But the language barrier does not stop him making friends — many of whom help him navigate the hallways, teach him jokes and offer up their sneakers for track practice. The thing he loves best about the Newark school: the automatic hand dryers in the bathrooms.

But he never forgets his home. Jean carries pictures of his friends, mother, sisters and newborn nephew inside a red and black suitcase and keeps a pair of jeans that his friends signed like a cast, wishing him good luck.

"My wish is that he can finish high school," Hirsch said of Jean. "And then if he wants, if he has a dream to get a college degree, then I would help him try to fulfill that dream and realize that goal, so that he can have a better life — better than any of his peers are having and will have in Haiti."